Empowered, employable, empathetic: changing lives and the community through mentoring
Kilcooley Women’s Centre serves an estate created for families displaced from Belfast during the Troubles, where unemployment, social isolation and exclusion continue to affect residents. Recognising a shortage of local mentors, the centre used Erasmus+ funding for its Innovative Quality Mentoring for Social Inclusion project. Find out what happened next.
Countries covered: | N Ireland, Slovakia, Romania, Turkey |
|---|---|
Period: | 2015-17 |
Funding: | €271,162.00 |
Type: | Strategic Partnerships for adult education |
From lived experience to community leadership
On an estate built to house people displaced from Belfast during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Kilcooley Women’s Centre is working to build a more resilient and supportive community through mentoring.
The Centre identified a need for more trained mentors to support people experiencing social isolation and exclusion. This led to the Erasmus+-funded Innovative Quality Mentoring for Social Inclusion project, bringing organisations from across Europe together to explore how community mentoring can help people at risk of exclusion become more connected, confident and engaged.
Sharing expertise across Europe
A key first step was to explore what it means to be a community mentor in each of the participating countries. Two trainers from each country were then trained in community mentoring, with the aim of cascading their learning through their own organisations and communities.
Together, the partners developed a training plan and mentoring modules, which were tested and refined within their organisations before being brought together into a best-practice guide and training manual.
The project demonstrated the value of European cooperation: while communities across Europe face different circumstances, many experience similar challenges around isolation, exclusion and lack of opportunity.
“Erasmus+ has been a great opportunity to learn from and share with other countries. Each country has different situations but similar issues. We have been able to form good working relationships with a wide variety of European organisations, allowing us to share best practice amongst communities,” says Lynne Bloomfield, the Centre’s executive director.
The project has had a particularly powerful impact because many participants had experienced social isolation or disadvantage themselves.
Donna McIlroy, from Belfast, returned to education and employment after raising her family, inspired by the support of a mentor. She went on to train as a counsellor and take part in the Erasmus+ project. Donna now works with survivors of sexual abuse and violence, using her skills and experience to support others.
Gina Murray’s journey demonstrates the potential of mentoring to create lasting change. Gina lost her 13-year-old daughter, Leanne, in the Shankill Road bombing in Belfast in 1993. The loss had a profound impact on her mental health, leaving her unable to work and struggling with everyday life.
Her life began to change when she was introduced to Kilcooley Women’s Centre and its mentoring programme. So, when the opportunity arose through the Erasmus+ project to train as a mentor herself, she was keen to get involved. Since then, Gina has continued her learning journey, completing Level 1 in Mentoring.
Gina now supports older people experiencing social isolation, helping them build confidence and self-esteem and engage in community activities. She has also established a Scout group on the Kilcooley estate for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, cascading her learning to volunteers and helping them develop as Scout leaders.
A model that can be shared
For Kilcooley Women’s Centre, the impact of Erasmus+ goes beyond the people directly involved in the project. The Centre now has greater expertise in community mentoring, while participants have developed skills that they are using to support others and create new opportunities within their communities.
The project has also demonstrated the value of developing practical resources that can be adapted and shared. By combining European experience with local knowledge, Innovative Quality Mentoring for Social Inclusion has created a model of community mentoring that can help organisations support people at risk of exclusion and, importantly, enable those with lived experience to become mentors and community leaders themselves.
The result is a lasting cycle of learning and support: people who have benefited from mentoring are gaining the skills and confidence to mentor others, strengthening their communities in the process.
To find out more about this case study, visit the Erasmus+ project database.
With the skills and confidence I gained, I have now cascaded the learning to my team of volunteers, who I am mentoring, to ensure they become first class Scout Leaders
Gina Murray